How did I save money today?

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Tank-Girl

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Dec 4, 2017
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Today I paid my car rego over 3 weeks early.

I paid a month and a half worth the instalments on my tax bill ahead of time.

I brought a lot of meat to stock my freezer at sale prices.

Filled up the car with petrol at the lowest priced station in town so I can
make it to the surgeon's visit in the big smoke in 2 weeks time.

The next month is going to be rugged so I got ahead on most of the big bills
and made sure I had enough food to last well over a month without shopping again.
 
My wife gave up her personal cell phone and is just going to use her work cell phone instead. Saves us $65+ a month. We also cut our grocery budget by $150 a month using more creative meal planning and eating leftovers once a week versus throwing anything out (reducing waste). Of course not having the furnace on always saves us money! Until it's time to turn the central air on anyway.
 
I have been making triple repayments on my tax bill.

I phoned up the ATO (Australian Tax Office) and I found out that if I make 2 more triple repayments I got this paid off and done!

YAAYYYYYYY!!!

It's taken a long time but with ongoing economic melt downs happening in different counties world wide I want to be free of interest
bearing debt before it hits our shores.
I remember interest rates being between 19 to 24 percent on house loans and even more on credit cards and personal loans in the 80's and what's set to hit us will make that look like a cake walk.

Things have been grim here while I've been doing this and I've taken to shopping once a month to throw every last cent I can at
the debt.

I'll have a little break once this is paid for, stock up the store room again and dig deep to tackle the next one.
 
@Tank-Girl : Mighty fine job there Tank-Girl. Get it paid off and gone and breath a lot easier. Sad that too many others did not learn from the 80's. I remember folks losing their homes because they had gotten variable interest mortgages, without any caps. You are one smart and dedicated young Lady.
 
@Tank-Girl : Mighty fine job there Tank-Girl. Get it paid off and gone and breath a lot easier. Sad that too many others did not learn from the 80's. I remember folks losing their homes because they had gotten variable interest mortgages, without any caps. You are one smart and dedicated young Lady.

Thank you so much!

That means a lot and I mean that sincerely.
It can be a lonely road and the amount of sacrifice it's taken has been very hard but...
once it's paid off I might even splurge and buy a steak and a bottle of wine.
Crazy wild woman that I am.
 
Planned ahead today and as we knew we were going out to do postage we also stopped off at the chain saw shop and got the oil cap seal that has disintegrated in our 251 chainsaw and also bought a spare for each both the 661 and 251 chainsaws. This saves money on fuel today and into the future too by having a few spares on hand at under $1.50 each I don't know why I didn't do this before :dunno:.

The last 2 nights we have also used the top of the slow combustion fireplace to reheat our soup on rather than turn on the electric stove top.
 
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Picked 518g of cherry tomatoes despite us having frosts and also separated 109g of organic rosemary we picked from the gardens and dried saving $27.89 in the shops. We also the last week been using our camp kettle on top of the slow combustion fireplace to heat up water for all of our cuppas rather than turning on the electric kettle.
 
... stopped off at the chain saw shop and got the oil cap seal that has disintegrated in our 251 chainsaw and also bought a spare for each both the 661 and 251 chainsaws. This saves money on fuel today and into the future too by having a few spares on hand...

Work had a 2-stroke gas engine hand drill. Gas cap had deteriorated from age. I spent a lot of time tracking down a replacement part, bought a new gas cap and spare one too! Somehow the Big Boss heard about it, junked the perfect good drill and bought a new one. And of course the spare gas cap does not fit.
 
Work had a 2-stroke gas engine hand drill. Gas cap had deteriorated from age. I spent a lot of time tracking down a replacement part, bought a new gas cap and spare one too! Somehow the Big Boss heard about it, junked the perfect good drill and bought a new one. And of course the spare gas cap does not fit.

Sure hope you were able to salvage that drill for yourself. I really dislike see working equipment / tools tossed just because they are out of date.
 
@The Lazy L ughhh :dunno: why would you trash a perfectly good drill when you can get a part for it ?. We keep everything maintained ourselves and with services too and I have been known to track parts down for old machinery from Sweden and England and import them to keep it going. The only time something gets trashed around here is if it puffs smoke or catches fire around here :) . What a complete waste of a perfectly good piece of machinery and not to mention the boss probably doesn't care about the company's bottom line or wasting money either.
 
Today we saved money by blanching and freezing more of our sweet potatoes rather than buying them. Also saved money on water and or rainwater use by supplement watering our vegetable seedlings with washing, blanching, and cooling water from our blanching and dish rinsing and watering part of our lawns with saved grey water from our showers and washing machine.
 
I save the pickling liquid from the jars of pickled cucumbers I buy at the supermarket and use it in a couple of different ways.

I slice up onions and put them in jar and top it off with extra white vinegar and give it a good shake and leave it in the back of the fridge for several weeks.

I use the liquid as a ready made salad dressing.

I never, ever throw it out.
 
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:woo hoo: go @Tank-Girl, knew you would pay it off in treble time.

Thank you, SC.

I got hardheaded about paying it off.

I still put a whole bunch of celery and a whole kilo of red capsicums in the dehydrator for food storage.
I got a kilo of chemical free lemons from the lady who runs the feed store. She had too many and was giving them away to customers.
I was in the right place at the right time for that score.
I'm thinking I might slice them up and put them in the dehydrator as well to grind up and mix with cracked black pepper
to make a seasoning for fish.
 
Another good day on the savings front :) .

- Purchased 6 kg of sausages on special from IGA saving $24 on their usual prices.
- Went to the pharmacy after checking their website for prices on multivitamins that we were low on and also butter menthol's for colds and flu and found they were on super special for both at one discount pharmacy. We purchased a years worth of multivitamins for the 2 of us and 6 lge boxes of butter menthol's saving $40.68 on usual prices.
- Another way we saved was to combine our errands being posting dried lavender I sold on the internet, a trip to IGA for the sausages and also a trip to the pharmacy too.
- Just had showers and saved the shower warm up water which we will use to supplement water some vegetable seedlings in the gardens with tomorrow saving on rain and town water use.
 
Sure hope you were able to salvage that drill for yourself. I really dislike see working equipment / tools tossed just because they are out of date.

@The Lazy L ughhh :dunno: why would you trash a perfectly good drill when you can get a part for it ?. We keep everything maintained ourselves and with services too and I have been known to track parts down for old machinery from Sweden and England and import them to keep it going. The only time something gets trashed around here is if it puffs smoke or catches fire around here :) . What a complete waste of a perfectly good piece of machinery and not to mention the boss probably doesn't care about the company's bottom line or wasting money either.

It was gone long before I knew what the Boss had done. :( I wouldn't be too surprised if it was sitting in the Boss's garage.
 
I started saving money in different ways.
1st.i turn the ac off when i go to bed for the night. Then turn it back on the next day.when it finally gets to warm.

2nd.i only go to the store when i need 4 item's or more.save gas that way.

3rd.i freeze bottles of water.in turn.i keep bottles of ice in the fridge.and swap them out when needed.that cuts down on the electric bill.

4th..i buy foods that can be eaten different ways.

5th.i live in a small town.so i took the time to learn which big town food store is closest. Shorter distance. Means less gas.

6th..I've been doing this a few years now..a battery charger and the necessarily amount of rechargeable battery's. Is cheaper then buying non rechargeables every 2 weeks.

7th.i have a shopping app that allows me to include the price.with the items im buying. I stay within my budget this way.

8th..i love planning ahead on meat patties..i bake 8 to 16 at a time.what dont get eaten that day.gets put into zip baggie then into the freezer.
 
I try to stock several months worth of everything we use. This allows us to purchase much of what we use when it is on sale and all but eliminates special trips to the store. (He says as his wife is on a special trip to the store.) It is not 100% but it does save significantly on time and money.

There is the added savings of eating todays food at last years prices and better yet last years sale prices.
 
That is how we do it too @Caribou and we rarely go on special trips to the shop.

We do also have the advantage of being 5 minutes away from town and because I sell a lot of items on eBay we time any errands with have to do with postage. We also keep stamps at home and the post box is only 2 minutes away so if we have no other errands to run we just post the letter we need to post.

Another way we are planning ahead is by doing our major shop once every 3 months which coincides with e-vouchers we can get from our supermarket where we can shop online and pick up our order giving us 20% off the normal prices, then of course we couple this with any items we need to stock up on on 50% off sales that week which then gives us a 70% discount off usual prices.

We also get a 5% off discount for our groceries and fuel using our roadside assist club and with fuel we couple that 5% off with rewards from our grocery shopping giving us another 4c off per litre of fuel and wait for the lowest fuel price before we stock up as we have a stock of full jerry cans of fuel in the garage to last 4 - 6 months. If we need groceries in between shops we look for the 50% off specials and we couple this with using our supermarkets rewards card which brings our discount to 55% off.

Trading is another way to get ahead too I have a number of like minded prepping friends all over Australia that I trade with. One lady I trade my homegrown organic herbs and lavender or items I sew and make with for organic lip balms and soaps she makes. We trade the use of our land with an apiarist who puts his hives here and we get 15 kg of free honey a year for our food stocks and many more.

It all makes a huge difference in savings as we are saving for our home deposit.
 
This morning I paid the last and final payments on my tax bill!!

Thank the Lord and a YUGE weight has fallen off my shoulders.

I got this tax bill because Workers Compensation didn't pay the right amount of income tax
out of my fortnightly payment.
It was their mistake and one I had to wear in spite of them admitting they did the wrong thing
and I had no legal recourse.
The tax wasn't paid and so it needed to be paid....by me.

Anyway they now have their pound of flesh and now onto the next
massive debt they saddled me with because of their incompetence.

Still, I won't let that or them rob me of the joy I feel overcoming and achieving this
milestone.
 
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